Observational Drawing _____________________________________________________________________

IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE, DRAWING SERVED

a strictly preparatory purpose. Painters used

drawing to practice and perfect their ideas,

creating countless sketches of minute details,

figural forms, and background settings before

reaching a desired composition for their

paintings. Although painted with oil on copper,

this work by Dutch artist Ambrosius Bosschaert

exemplifies drawing’s importance to Renaissance-

era artistic practice in that it is an imagined

image—a composite of observational and

scientific studies of life.

Bosschaert painted this still life nearly four

hundred years ago in Holland. The subject is a

bouquet of flowers that bursts forth from a small

glass vase in a profusion of color and texture. The

vase sits on a ledge—perhaps of a balcony or

window—overlooking a meandering river, a small

island, and a distant city. Alongside the vase on

the ledge are two seashells, a flower out of water,

and a small insect.

Bosschaert’s flower paintings typically consist of

bouquets that could not have existed in real life,

because the flowers he chose to depict did not all

bloom during the same season. In this

arrangement, he combined studies of tulips,

irises, roses, carnations, daffodils, and various

nibbling creatures. Still-life paintings such as this

one provided excellent opportunities for artists to

showcase their abilities to mimic textures and

surfaces in great detail and with realistic effects,

which they practiced first in drawing, and then

perfected in painting. Bosschaert was a leader in

Dutch flower paintings, and many scholars

consider this painting to be his masterpiece.

Drawing from Life Take a walk around the school, neighborhood, or

community. Collect samples of nature, such as

flowers, plants, leaves, petals, sticks, and insects

or bugs. In teams of three, gather your source

materials and arrange a still life in the classroom.

Try different combinations before you reach a

desired composition. Then, talk as a group about

what you see and record some of the details that

you notice. What details did you see that your

partners did not? Choose a spot around the still

life to sit and sketch. When finished, compare

and contrast sketches and the different

perspectives that you recorded.

For more information on drawing and its importance to

artistic practice, see the introductory essay included on the

curriculum CD.

For a lesson plan inspired by observational drawing, see the

classroom activity Life Drawing: Science Illustration included

in the curriculum folder.

AMBROSIUS BOSSCHAERT (Holland, 1573–1621)

Bouquet of Flowers on a Ledge, 1619–20

Oil on copper, 15½ x 14 x 2 in. (39.4 x 35.6 x 5.1 cm)

LACMA, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edward W. Carter (M.2003.108.7)

Photo © 2010 Museum Associates/LACMA

Collage _____________________________________________________________________ BEFORE SURREALISM, ARTISTS GEORGES BRAQUE and

Pablo Picasso invented the first mixed-media

drawing techniques. Braque’s Glass and Playing

Cards from LACMA’s permanent collection

combines traditional drawing with modern

collage. He created the work by layering different

source materials, such as paper and faux wood

paneling, on top of each other, in combination

with charcoal drawing. The process incorporates

drawing’s characteristic elements of spontaneity,

chance, and visual exploration but with an

inventive approach in a new medium. The result

depicts ordinary subjects, a glass and playing

cards, but avoids the conventional role of art as

describing physical appearance. Instead, Braque

explored an alternative way of presenting a visual

equivalent of the world we see and experience. In

what art historians now call the synthetic cubist

phase, artists abstracted forms into rectangular

shapes and flat planes, building up a composition

“synthetically.” Here, Braque reduced the appear-

ance of the glass to a series of lines, and the cards

to quick notations of shape and suit. The edges of

the cards are left open in places, and blurred in

others, as a way of both unifying the elements

and creating an overall flatness to the image. At

this moment in cubism, artists sought ways to

acknowledge the two-dimensional nature of the

support (sheet of paper or canvas) by creating an

image that defiantly rejected the appearance of

depth in space. The surrealists adopted collage as

a primary visual strategy because of its capacity

to disorient the viewer through the unlikely

juxtaposition of everyday images.

Considered one of the movement’s leaders,

Max Ernst was the first to intuit the surrealist

potential of collage, which relied on found

materials from everyday life that could be

reassembled to create perplexing surreal

scenarios. For some works, his collage sources

were printed teaching-aid catalogues that dealt

with subjects ranging from anatomy to paleon-

tology. According to Ernst, his collages “transform

the banal pages of advertisement into dramas

which reveal my most secret desires.”1

Collage Still Lifes Create a source list of everyday materials that

could be included in a still life, including objects,

textiles, and foods. Gather and arrange the items

into a still life, then sketch it in pencil. Next,

sketch the shapes that comprise the still life’s

composition. Cut out the shapes and rearrange

them on another sheet of paper, transforming

your drawing into collage. For a colorful or

decorative touch, cut the shapes out of construc-

tion or patterned paper inspired by the still life.

1 Leslie Jones, “Tracing Dreams: Surrealist Drawing 1915–

1950” in Drawing Surrealism (Los Angeles: LACMA, 2012),

pp. 40–46.

For more information on modern drawing, see the

introductory essay included on the curriculum CD.

For a lesson plan inspired by abstract drawing, see the

classroom activity Abstract Still Lifes included in the

curriculum folder.

GEORGES BRAQUE (France, 1882–1963)

Glass and Playing Cards, 1912

Mixed media/assemblage/collage, papier collé, and charcoal on paper

115/8 x 181/8 in. (29.5 x 46 cm)

LACMA, Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison Collection (31.12.2)

© 2012 Georges Braque Estate/ARS/ADAGP, Paris

Photo © 2012 Museum Associates/LACMA

Exquisite Corpse _____________________________________________________________________ IF AUTOMATIC DRAWING ENCAPSULATED THE SURREALIST

notion of tapping into the unconscious, then the

game of exquisite corpse, beginning in 1925,

embodied the surrealist notions of collaboration

and chance. In André Breton and Paul Eluard’s

Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism, the exquisite

corpse is defined as a “game of folded paper that

consists of having several people compose a phrase

or drawing collectively, none of the participants

having any idea of the nature of the preceding

contribution or contributions.”4 The earliest

examples were drawn with graphite or ink or

colored pencil on everyday writing paper. Around

1929 collaborators began using pastel or tempera

on black paper, and beginning in the mid-1930s,

collage was used. According to Breton, a frequent

“player,” “What really excited us about these

productions was the certainty that, no matter

what, they could not possibly have been conjured

up by a single brain, and that they possessed to a

much greater degree the capacity for ‘deviation.’”5

The bizarre anthropomorphic creatures generated

from games of exquisite corpse also may have

provided inspiration for artists’ individual works.

To create the 1938 example featured here, Cadavre

exquis (Exquisite Corpse) by French artists André

Breton, Jacqueline Lamba, and Yves Tanguy, the

artists met, perhaps in a Paris café or apartment.

Each brought art materials, which became game

pieces: magazines, newspapers, flyers, any kind

of printed ephemera, along with scissors and glue.

The artists kept their stashes of images hidden, as

surprise is part of the game. They set out a piece of

paper like the one shown here, about the size of a

sheet of notebook paper. The first artist applied an

image cut from paper and fixed it in place, maybe

the clock, the cone, and perhaps the shorts shown

here. Leaving a tiny part visible at the top as a

guide, the artist then passed the folded sheet, with

the image mostly hidden, to the next artist. The

game repeated as each “player” added a cut image

to the developing collective form. The exquisite

corpse game ended when the unplanned,

unexpected form was revealed. The game

championed ideas surrealists valued: chance,

collaboration, and unexpected outcomes.

Write, Make, Collaborate

Create an exquisite corpse writing by, first,

forming a group of three writers. As a group,

select characters, a time, and a place for your

story. Let the action of your story develop

cooperatively by allowing the first writer to

establish the beginning, the second to invent the

`middle, and the third to cement the end. Tell the

story out loud as a group and then record it in

writing. Pass the written story to a group of three

artists, who will use the text as inspiration for an

exquisite corpse drawing. Artists—read the story

out loud, then individually imagine another

character that might live in this strange world.

Fold a single sheet of paper into three sections,

then ask each artist to contribute a head, a torso,

and legs to spawn a new and inventive creature.

Pass the drawing along to another group of

writers to use as inspiration for yet another story.

1 Leslie Jones, “Tracing Dreams: Surrealist Drawing 1915–

1950” in Drawing Surrealism (Los Angeles: LACMA, 2012),

pp. 25–30.

2 Ibid.

For art historical information on surrealism and works by

other surrealist artists, see the introductory essay included

on the curriculum CD.

For a lesson plan inspired by collaborative drawing, see the

classroom activity Surrealist Drawing Games included in the

curriculum folder.

ANDRÉ BRETON (France, 1896–1966)

JACQUELINE LAMBA (France, 1910–1993)

YVES TANGUY (France, 1900–1955, active United States)

Cadavre exquis (Exquisite Corpse), 1938, Collage, 97/8 x 63/8 in. (25.1 x 16.2 cm)

Collection Sylvio Perlstein-Antwerp © 2012 André Breton Estate

© 2012 Jacqueline Lamba Estate/ARS/ADAGP, Paris, © 2012 Yves Tanguy/ARS, NY

Photo © 2012 Museum Associates/LACMA, by Hervé Lewandowski

Decalcomania _____________________________________________________________________ IN THE MID-1930S, ARTISTS DEVELOPED NEW

automatic drawing techniques in attempts to

bypass the rational mind in the creative process.

Decalco-mania, for example, involved applying

gouache to a sheet of paper and/or stencil and

then pressing it against another sheet, creating

a transfer image that is revealed when the sheets

are pulled apart. Originally a decorative technique

popular in the nineteenth century, it was repur-

posed for thera-peutic usages and designated the

Rorschach test in the 1920s. This test, still used

today for the psychological analysis of patients,

similarly involves the appearance of random

shapes created by inkblots and later interpreted

by a doctor. In art and medicine, there was a

shared belief that the subconscious realm held

valuable information.

An example from surrealism is George Hugnet’s

Untitled from LACMA’s permanent collection. Here,

the viewer is a critical part of the art experience,

invited to envision and interpret what the artist

spontaneously created. The title, Untitled, provides

no clue or, in surrealist thought, offers no

evidence of a preexisting form being described.

Hugnet applied areas of gouache (an opaque

watercolor) in a variety of colors onto one sheet

of paper, and while the paint was still wet, pressed

a second sheet on top. This transfer created the

forms you see—ambiguous colors, shapes, and

textures filled with endless interpretations for

the viewer.

Paint-blot Drawings Create your own decalcomania drawing by

squeezing small dots of different colored nontoxic

paint, such as acrylic, tempera, or gouache, onto

a sheet of sturdy paper. Fold the paper in half,

using your fingers to gently manipulate the paint.

Experiment by tempering the pressure with

which you fold and massage, allowing the paints

to mix and interact in different ways. Open the

sheet to reveal your paint-blot drawing, then ask

a few peers to title the work according to what

they see.

For information on other surrealist drawing techniques,

see the introductory essay included on the curriculum CD.

For a lesson plan inspired by experimental drawing, see the

classroom activity Experimental Drawing included in the

curriculum folder.

GEORGES HUGNET (France, 1906–1974)

Untitled, c. 1935–36

Gouache, image and sheet: 9¾ x 13¾ in. (24.8 x 33.7 cm)

framed: 175/8 x 205/8 x 1 in. (44.8 x 52.4 x 2.5 cm)

LACMA, purchased with funds provided by Alice and Nahum Lainer

through the 2006/2007 Drawings Group (M. 2007.28)

© 2012 Georges Hugnet Estate/ARS/ADAGP, Paris

Photo © 2012 Museum Associates/LACMA